Precipitation Distribution Associated with Fronts Co-occurring with Atmospheric Rivers and Mesoscale Convective Systems
Atmospheric fronts are the most prominent weather phenomenon, responsible for total and extreme precipitation, especially in the mid-latitudes. More recent attention has been paid to the climatology of frontal systems and their linkages with precipitation events. Limited studies have shown how frontal precipitation is affected when fronts occur with, for example, warm conveyor belts and extratropical cyclones. Given the importance of atmospheric rivers (ARs) and mesoscale convective systems (MCSs) in mid-latitude hydroclimate, we have focused on the mid-latitude fronts co-occurring with ARs and MCSs and investigated associated precipitation characteristics in observation. These three weather phenomena were detected using automated objective algorithms that have been widely used. We analyzed the occurrence frequency of fronts with ARs and MCSs and their contribution to (total and) extreme frontal precipitation using IMERG data in frontal catalogs from both a grid-point and frontal object perspective. Observational results suggest that fronts more often occur with ARs and then MCSs. Cold and warm fronts with ARs and both ARs and MCSs have a larger contribution to extreme precipitation over the ocean basins and eastern coast of continents while these with MCSs have more to central North America. In addition, fronts with both contribute more to high precipitation events and produce the highest amount of regional-mean precipitation in the mid-latitudes of both hemispheres, compared to other categories. They are also associated with a larger precipitation area within the frontal zone. This work examined frontal precipitation characteristics with co-occurring other weather phenomena and will be used to evaluate the model's ability to simulate the co-occurrence.